Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (review)

250 Reviews lantern to permit the smoke to escape while keeping the elements out. Thompson convincingly argues that the popularity of the older style was in part a function of archaism; Geoffrey of Monmouth's celebration of King Arthur and the subsequent popularity of the Arthurian cycle, in Thompson's words (p. 101), 'helped to prolong the life of a secular building that was absurdly archaic by Continental standards where it was only retained for bams, farmhouses, and market halls'. Elsewhere (p. 194) Thompson suggests that this might have been 'a triumph of patriotism over common sense'. The hall was the focal point for the large medieval households of kings and of secular and ecclesiastical lords. Of the four functions of these households, 'provision of food, personal service of the members to the lord, religious duties and hospitality' (p. 115), three occurred in the hall. Because of the close association between the household and the hall, the decline of the household meant the decline of the hall. Thompson cites evidence revealing the decline in the size of royal and noble households in the sixteenth century, and he also notes the retreat to smaller rooms within the castle complex. This part of his argument seems sound, but I am not convinced by his claim that both the decline and the retreat were the results of Renaissance individualism a la mode de Burckhardt. This is one of the few blemishes in the book. The illustrations are excellent, and even if he does not always keep his promise (p. x) to avoid measurement and abstruse vocabulary, he does it enough to make this very readable book accessible to a wide audience. A. Lynn Martin Department of History University of Adelaide Walsham, Alexandra, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (The Royal Historical Society, Studies in History 68), Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 1993, cloth, pp. xiii, 142; R.R.P. AUS$53.00. The seventeenth-century Benedictine Augustine Baker noted that after the Elizabethan settlement of 1559 most Catholics 'did not well discern any great fault, novelty or difference . . . easily digested the new religion and accommodated themselves thereto'. Alexandra Walsham's book is a study of these 'Church Papists', English Catholics who continued in their faith but also conformed to the Established Church. From the 1570s, however, a new generation of missionary priests, educated in seminaries on the Continent, Reviews 251 attacked such compromise, insisting in devotional and polemical literature that Catholics must stand firm to their faith and refuse to attend the Church of England. Walsham argues that with seminary priests expounding 'reasons for refusal', and Tridentine R o m e seeking to undermine the stance of conformers, there was built up an idealised and illusory picture of Catholic history after 1559 as one predominantly of heroic Recusant resistance, a story which still obscures the Church Papists. As Walsham observes, 'they were pawns in the ecclesiastical politics of the post-Reformation period' and 'puppets in the politics of confessional historiography'. Although the zealous and often heroic missionary priests pressed the Catholic laity to stand up and be counted as Recusants, many continued to attend the Church of England. Moreover, these Church Papists were supported in their outward conformity by several Catholic secular clergy, such as Dr Alban Langdale and his nephew Thomas, whose 'Comfortable Advertisements' acknowledged that temporal rulers should be obeyed in religious matters. Even some seminary priests were in practice more relaxed about conformity than their own literature suggested. Catholic conformity to the Church of England was a 'pragmatic arrangement which often occasioned considerable conflict of conscience', but nevertheless preserved the prosperity and status of English Catholics—both gentry and the 'middling sort'. Several families made amicable arrangements whereby elder sons conformed in time to succeed to an inheritance, and wives of conforming husbands often remained resolutely recusant, though it is unclear whether this reveals female independence (complicating contemporary rhetoric and modern views of patriarchy); or whether wifely recusancy was arranged by the conforming husband as part of family management of the situation. These Church Papists raise fascinating historical questions about the complexities of relationships and the categories of 'Catholic' and 'Protestant'. 'Heretics they are', wrote the...